HIV/AIDS an extra danger for LRA child soldiers

When a senior commander in Joseph Kony’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) noticed that one of his 22 wives was seriously ill, rather than give her with medical help he forced her into the bush of southern Sudan to save himself from infection. Although weakened by her illness and hundreds of kilometres from her home northern Uganda, she was able to walk back to Gulu town, where she belatedly received medical attention. She was found to have contracted HIV/AIDS, possibly after her violent abduction by the rebel army. Unable to come to terms with her illness, she threatened to kill three other women in the reception centre in Gulu for escaped rebel captives, recognising them as former wives of the same rebel commander, and blaming them for infecting her with the HIV/AIDS virus. The Abducted Children Registration and Information System (ACRIS), a database documenting over 26,000 cases of child abduction by the LRA, shows that about 20 percent of those abducted by the rebels are female. Many of these women are forced into marriages with Kony himself, while others are given to senior commanders by Kony as rewards and incentives. “Most of the female abductees are sexually abused whilst detained by the LRA and many escapees suffer from HIV/AIDS and other STDs,” according to John Komakech, information and research officer for Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO), an organisation offering psychological counselling and therapy to former abductees. “Almost 100 percent suffer from syphilis,” he said, adding that most also suffer the social stigma of rape. “In Sudan we were distributed to men and I was given to a man who had just killed his woman,” the Coalition on Child Soldiers quoted Concy Abanya, a 14 year-old girl abducted in Kitgum, as saying in its global report in June. “Girls who refused to become LRA wives were killed in front of us, as a warning to the rest of us,” she added. The ACRIS database, developed jointly by Unicef and the Ugandan government, shows that over one third of abductions are of children under 18 years of age. Many are kidnapped in violent raids on their homes, while others are taken from camps for the 480,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north of Uganda. Jeffrey Kaleba, Communications Officer for World Vision, an organisation working to assist former abductees, told IRIN that one night in 1996, a group of LRA combatants broke into the Boca girls’ boarding school and took 130 girls from their beds by force. Most abductions, some involving children as young as eight, are carried out in the impoverished Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda, where the LRA has been fighting a guerilla-style war against Ugandan government forces since the late 1980s. International human rights organisation Amnesty International said in its 1997 report ‘Uganda: Stolen children, stolen lives’ that 90 percent of LRA soldiers were abducted children, and “it is widely believed that the group could not survive militarily without them”. George Omona, programme officer with the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD), an organisation working to reconcile returned abductees with their communities in the north, told IRIN that, soon after being seized, children are forced to take part in ritual killings and torture of others to indoctrinate them into the rebel forces and to turn them against their own communities. “Children caught trying to escape are summarily executed in the bush as a warning to other captives,” he added. For as long as the LRA is active, escapees will be forced to live in fear of further rebel attacks. Not only do they suffer the psychological trauma of their time under Kony’s control but they are often the targets of vicious reprisals by the rebel army. Former abductees are often easily recognised by the visible scars of torture, and once identified, they are re-abducted and killed. Reconciliation, amnesty efforts offer some hope Local peace initiatives have raised hopes that some rebel groups based in northern Uganda, who are thought to be isolated from Kony, could soon bring an end to abductions in their particular areas of control. Humanitarian sources in Gulu told IRIN that one senior rebel commander, who has begun peace negotiations with local authorities in Gulu District, said he would not force new abductees into the rebel army, and would use them only to carry loot. However, any escapees found during raids would be re-abducted and killed, the sources said. They added that a number of rebel commanders had demanded the return of escapees as a condition of peace. Some abductees do not attempt escape for fear of reprisals against their families. GUSCO’s files include the case of Patrick, who was abducted as a nine year-old while walking home from Lukwir 7 school in Gulu District. About a year later when Patrick managed to escape his captors, a group of rebels were immediately sent to attack his family. They found the home empty - Patrick’s parents having already fled, fearing such an attack - and so burned down the home and everything in it. Recent reconciliation efforts between the governments of Sudan and Uganda - most notably the 1999 Nairobi Peace Agreement - have raised hopes that child abductees being held in LRA strongholds in southern Sudan may soon be able to return home. Following the signing in September 2000 of the Sudan-Uganda Joint Communique on Immediate Action on Abducted Children, the Khartoum government set up a centre in Juba, a government-held garrison town in southern Sudan, to receive and process abductees. According to Unicef, a total of 212 people who had escaped the LRA while in southern Sudan during 2000-2001 had become part of a programme of repatriation to Uganda, via Khartoum. Some of these children had only known life with the LRA, having been born in captivity, Unicef said. Some say that the recent detente in relations between Uganda and Sudan has weakened Sudan’s long-standing support for the LRA, and that abductees will find escape easier. Others say that, as Kony finds access to arms and food restricted, the rebels will rely more heavily on abductees for both military and logistical support, and the rate of abductions will rise. Uganda has frequently accused the Khartoum administration of providing the LRA with arms and base camps inside Sudan, and of returning to the rebels children attempting to escape. Escapees pose an additional humanitarian problem In its humanitarian update for June, UNOCHA reported an upward trend in the number of escapees as well as an increase in the number of rebel attacks in the north. While many abductees are able to escape on their own initiative, others are captured during fighting by the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF). Minister for the North Omwony Ojwok told IRIN that those taken in battle were sent for military debriefing at the nearest UPDF barracks, while escapees were sent to reception centres like the one at GUSCO to benefit from counselling. All are able to take advantage of the Ugandan government’s year-long amnesty offered to present and former rebels and opposition groups. Gulu District Amnesty Commissioner Raphael Makoha told IRIN that, since the beginning of June 2001, he had issued 68 amnesty certificates, all but two of these to former abductees. However, the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI), a group working to facilitate peace negotiations in the north, said that the Amnesty Commission office in Gulu town had suffered from a lack of resources and had been “rather ineffective” in its work. ARPLI claims there have been occasions when escapees, having fled to safety through the bush, attempted to report to the district amnesty office in Gulu town, but failed to hand themselves in as the office was closed. Komakech told IRIN that many former abductees are wary of returning to their communities because of the atrocities they have been forced to commit while a part of the rebel army. Before GUSCO was created in 1994, the government would parade captured children through their local towns in order for their relatives to identify them and take them home, Komakech said. “Some of the children had been away for over 10 years and their parents were not able recognise them, while other parents were too ashamed to take their children back,” he added. One of the first things escapees now do to dissociate themselves from the rebels is to cut off their long, dreadlocked hair which identify them as Kony’s soldiers. It has been important to inform communities of the way children have suffered in captivity, and to create an atmosphere of reconciliation, Komakech said. “In traditional Acholi society there is no concept of trauma, and so many people find it hard to understand the psychological problems many abductees face. A traumatised person would traditionally be thought of as being insane,” he said. There is also a very strong tradition of reconciliation in Acholi culture, and Komakech reported that the children had a powerful belief “that they can be cleansed through traditional methods”. There are, however, some underlying tensions in the community, and some sub-counties had passed bye-laws specifically protecting former abductees, he added. Reception centres like the one at GUSCO also attempt to provide some vocational training for abductees, and the centre is currently training a number of boys to be tailors. However, Omona told IRIN that an estimated 64 percent of the population in northern Uganda were living below the poverty line, and that the lack of job opportunities was undermining the reintegration of abductees into society. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Friday that Uganda’s economy had been “one of the most vibrant in Africa for almost a decade,” but acknowledged that the north of the country had not benefited from Uganda’s good economic performance. The poverty level in northern Uganda was not only still high, but had risen in the last three years, Radio Uganda quoted him as saying. Museveni put this down to rebel activities and banditry which had “left dysfunctional family units and an eroding infrastructure,” Museveni added. John Komakech of GUSCO said that monitoring the progress of children once they had left the reception centre was another big problem. Although the Ugandan government had said that children should receive four follow-up visits per year, the resources were not available to carry out that requirement, he added. GUSCO was, however, attempting to train community care-givers to assist with reintegration. Between 1994, when it started assisting abductees, and March 2001, the centre had successfully resettled 2,730 children. The centre had never failed to reunite a child with his extended family, Komakech said. The fear of rebel attacks and abduction has forced about half the Acholi population - some 480,000 people - into camps for IDPs, where the UPDF say they can protect them. Most have been there for over for over five years and are desperate to go home. Many say that investment in security, infrastructure and job creation would lead to improved security and restore the Acholis’ confidence in the government. Others, including donors, say insecurity prevents them from investing in humanitarian and development operations in the north. According to UNOCHA, northern Uganda has suffered from a split assistance strategy by donors in Uganda, under which funds are disbursed to the more stable southern and central regions, whereas humanitarian activities in the insecure north have been chronically underfunded. As a signal of hope, perhaps, and despite all the suffering he experienced at the hands of the rebels, Patrick has now gone back to school and has been chosen to attend the award of the World’s Children’s prize in Sweden. He has plans to continue his studies and gain a place at university.